Three more days of 10DA
In case you missed something, here's a chance to get acquainted with events of the last three days of Ten Days of Astronomy in Daruvar 2014.
Monday, 31. March 2014. u 16:37 sati 10 Days of Astronomy 2014
Day four (Monday)
This was a day we didn’t have to fear about the number of visitors to our lecture. Naturally, this is all because of Ante Radonić who has already captivated a large audience here in Daruvar. Ante’s sixth lecture in Daruvar (the previous five were all held at the 10DA during the last five years) was entitled ‘Rockets for Space – Today and Tomorrow.’ Even though it may sound like a ‘male’ topic I was very surprised at how many female visitors were paying close attention to all the talk about solid fuel driven rocket engines, liquid-propellant rockets that use hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the engines of the future, ion thrusters or even the idea of nuclear propulsion where a 50 000 ton rocket would be propelled by a series of explosions of atomic bombs.
Ante Radonić
There wasn’t a type of rocket that Ante didn’t mention, or a country that manufactures rocket engines, participates in the manufacture in any way or purchases engines from other countries to propel its rockets and rocket programs. We learned that some American rockets contain Russian engines and that the South Korean rocket is, in fact, a copy of the Russian rocket. We also learned about China making great strides in its space program as well as utilizing a lunar lander. It is the only country besides Russia and The United States to have sent a human being to space. Even after the hour and a half of lecturing there were still many questions for Ante to answer so in the end it took another half an hour for the lecture to really end.
Day five (Tuesday)
Today’s lecture was held by Tijana Prodanović, PhD, from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Novi Sad. The lecture topic ‘The Dark Side of the Universe’ sounds mystical, therefore it attracted a lot of those who think they already know all there is to know about the bright side of the universe. Needless to say, the hall was packed to capacity. The visitors listened to the lecturer’s every word. She won them over with her simple, spontaneous, and charming demeanor and made a difficult topic easy to understand. We learned that we know little to nothing about dark matter but that it must be out there because of the way light behaves in our universe. We also learned that Newton wasn’t completely right about gravity, and that it was Einstein who realized what gravity of stellar objects really does – bends space and creates gravitational lensing – and that while we are looking at the darkness of the universe we may be seeing two or more images of one and the same stellar object.
Tijana Prodanović
We learned about gamma rays as well, and about neutrinos that, according to Tijana, are really very asocial particles that don’t like to hang out with any other particle and just pass through matter instead. They are even passing through us but it doesn’t hurt so it doesn’t matter much to us. Tijana received a well-earned round of applause in the end and a few questions she was eager to answer. After yet another round of applause it was clear that the visitors were loath to leave – many young people surrounded Tijana with many other questions it seemed easy for her to answer. We hope Tijana will manage to make time for 10DA 2015 and that we will be seeing her and hearing from her again.
Day six (Wednesday)
Today’s guest didn’t need an introduction as there wasn’t enough room in the lecture hall for all the visitors. Everybody knew who the lecturer was – the academic Vladimir Paar, who had already held interesting lectures in front of a packed hall many times before. With this year’s topic, ‘Genome Regulators – A New Paradigm of Life on Earth’ he tried to explain to us what he was currently working on with his associates, one of whom, Mrs. Rosandić, was also present. They explained what the human genome was and that it consisted of a code so long that it would fit in thousand thousand page books with pages that contained 70 lines with 70 signs each.
Vladimir Paar
Everything we know about the human genome represents 1% of useful entry and the rest is ‘trash’. The academic’s team is currently digging through this very trash because they refuse to concede that 99% of the genome can be unnecessary. They think there are regulators or ‘computers’ there that control or coordinate the brain and the human genome. He also explained that the human immune system works perfectly well and that its failure would kill us within a day. I still cannot convey everything I’ve heard today to you because if I could, I would probably be working in academic Paar’s team. We therefore took the effort of recording the lecture and you will be able to hear and see it soon.
Find more photos from 10DA in our Flickr gallery,
Find more photos from 10DA in our Flickr gallery,
